Giving Ground to the
Anti-AbortionistsHave Democrats Surrendered on Abortion
Rights?by Nicole Colson
www.dissidentvoice.org
February 3, 2005First Published in
Socialist Worker

“We
can all recognize that abortion in many ways represents a sad, even tragic,
choice to many, many women.”

It sounds like something straight out of the mouth of George W. Bush -- or
some other anti-choice Republican looking to repeal abortion rights. But
this was the comment of Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, as she spoke
last month to a 1,000-strong crowd of abortion rights supporters on the 32nd
anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.

Taking a page straight from the Bush administration’s “moral values”
playbook, Clinton celebrated faith and organized religion as the “primary”
reasons why teenagers would abstain from sexual relations -- and insisted
that there “is an opportunity for people of good faith to find common ground
in this debate.” Unfortunately, the “common ground” Clinton is talking about
is squarely on the turf of the right wing.

Clinton’s comments are just one example of the Democratic Party leadership’s
attempt to embrace a more conservative stance on abortion rights after their
November election losses.

Appearing last weekend on NBC’s Meet the Press, John Kerry told host Tim
Russert that his party is a “big tent,” and it welcomes anti-choice
Democrats. While defending the legality of abortion, Kerry said, “we ought
to be making certain that people understand there are other options.
Abstinence is worth talking about. Adoption is worth talking about.”
Apparently, taking the right to choose away from teenage women is worth
“talking about” as well -- Kerry told Russert that he was in favor of
national legislation requiring parental notification for teens seeking
abortion, as long as it had a judicial and medical exemption.

“Party leaders say their support for preserving the landmark [Roe v. Wade]
ruling will not change,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “But they are
looking at ways to soften the hard line, such as promoting adoption and
embracing parental notification requirements for minors and bans on
late-term abortions.”

The Democrats seem determined to prove that they are moving away from
support for abortion rights. One of the Democrats’ first acts following the
elections, for example, was to choose staunchly anti-choice (and anti-gay)
Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) to replace Tom Daschle as the party’s minority
leader in the Senate.

And in the current contest to see who will replace Terry McAuliffe as head
of the Democratic National Committee, criticizing abortion seems to be a
requirement.

Consider former Indiana Rep. Tim Roemer -- who, incredibly, has the backing
of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a darling of liberals. As a member of
Congress, Roemer voted in favor of the misnamed “partial-birth” abortion ban
in 2003; supported barring family planning funding in U.S. aid abroad; voted
for the Unborn Victims of Violence Act that gives fetuses a legal status;
and supported a measure making it illegal for adults (other than legal
guardians) to transport minors across state lines to receive an abortion.

Not to be outdone, former Vermont governor and failed presidential candidate
Howard Dean, another frontrunner for the DNC job, recently told NBC, “I have
long believed that we ought to make a home for pro-life Democrats.”

Democrats taking a lukewarm stance on abortion is nothing new. President
Jimmy Carter supported the Hyde Amendment, which cut government funding of
abortions for poor women. While president, Bill Clinton famously said that
abortion should be “safe, legal” and, most of all, “rare.” His
administration took no action as access to abortion dwindled during the
1990s. In 1999, Clinton sold out poor women across the globe when he agreed
to a global “gag rule,” imposed on international health and women’s rights
groups who are recipients of U.S. aid.

Despite all this, prominent middle-class women’s groups such as the National
Organization for Women (NOW) and NARAL Pro-Choice America continue to claim
that the best way to defend abortion rights is to get out the vote for
Democrats -- and devote money to lobbying and challenging restrictive laws
in court.

In reality, groups like NOW and NARAL have shifted to the right along with
the Democrats, embracing the ever-more conservative terms of the “debate”
among the politicians. When Hillary Clinton talked about the “tragedy” of
abortion, Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation,
couldn’t find anything wrong with the remarks. “In many ways,” said Smeal,
“[Clinton] said that if you’re interested in reducing the number of
abortions, you should be with us.”

Such statements represent a dramatic reversal from what was once accepted as
common sense in the women’s movement--that the right to abortion is an
essential component of equal rights for women. Women have to be able to
determine what happens to their bodies--including terminating an unwanted
pregnancy.

The Christian Right have a catchphrase claiming that “equal rights begin in
the womb.” But this overlooks the fact that women’s position in society is
hardly equal.

In a world where more and more working people lack health care and
affordable day care -- and where a majority of women work outside the home
while also carrying the burden of child-rearing, housekeeping and cooking
inside the home -- pregnancies have economic and social consequences, and
women need the ability to end one if they choose.

Restrictions on abortion rights impact poor and working-class women the
most--they are less able to travel long distances, pay exorbitant amounts of
money or endure insulting waiting periods and “evaluations.”

And the cost of these restrictions are measured in real lives. Like Rosie
Jimenez, the Texas woman who died in 1977 from a back-alley abortion in
Mexico, where she traveled after Texas stopped funding Medicaid abortions.
Or Indiana teenager Becky Bell, who died in 1990 from complications from an
abortion obtained after traveling across state lines because of Indiana’s
strict parental consent laws.

The right wing’s arguments against abortion are couched in rhetoric about
“morality.” But their crusade is political, not moral.

Morality is a personal matter. No one in the pro-choice movement has ever
suggested that anyone who is morally opposed to abortion should be forced to
have one. But this is exactly what the anti-abortionists want to do in
reverse--impose their own conservative moral values on all women.

We shouldn’t accept any restriction on a woman’s right to choose
abortion--no matter which party is making the proposal. Abortion is a right
that no woman should have to apologize for.

How to defend the right to
choose

There's no doubt that the November elections left the anti-choice bigots
feeling confident -- and ready to push even harder to overturn abortion
rights. Christian conservatives like Focus on the Family’s James Dobson are
already sending a message to the Bush administration that they expect
payback for their mobilization of Republican voters.

And in January, on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, thousands of anti-choice
protesters mobilized in Washington, D.C. -- and even in liberal San
Francisco -- to show that they think they’re on a roll. The
anti-abortionists had support in high places, too--as he has in the past,
George W. Bush phoned in to the Washington rally to declare that “this
movement will not be defeated.”

But as bold as the anti-choice forces appear today, it’s important to
remember that they can be beaten back -- and have been in the past.

At the end of the 1980s, Operation Rescue (OR) gained national prominence
with its blockades of clinics across the country to harass women seeking
abortions. In 1991, OR invaded the city of Wichita, Kan., and -- thanks to
legal protection from George Bush Sr.’s administration -- succeeded in
shutting down several clinics.

Abortion rights supporters -- many of whom had spent the preceding years
organizing against local anti-abortionist clinic blockades -- decided that
they would defend the clinics themselves to keep them open. When OR tried to
mobilize in Buffalo, N.Y., in April 1992, thousands of pro-choice
demonstrators traveled from around the country to confront them.

From the moment the anti-choice fanatics showed up, they were met by angry
pro-choice crowds, chanting, “You’re not in Kansas anymore, we’ll defend the
clinic door!”

By physically confronting OR, pro-choice demonstrators made sure that the
clinics doors stayed open. The anti-abortionists left town, their latest
offensive a total failure. OR shrank in significance from that point on, and
finally disbanded.

Just as being in the streets was the key to defeating anti-choice fanatics
trying to shut down clinics, it was also the key to defeating the challenge
to abortion rights in the courts.

Roe could have been overturned in two cases that came before the Supreme
Court in 1989 and 1992. Hundreds of thousands of abortion rights supporters
turned out for two national demonstrations as the separate cases were being
considered. The justices didn’t overturn legal abortion--and one major
reason, according to Justice David Souter, is that doing so would cause
“both profound and unnecessary damage to the court’s legitimacy.”

Now, the right wing is smelling victory again. Our side has to rise to this
challenge.

The pro-choice protesters who turned out to challenge the anti-abortion
protesters in San Francisco last month had the right idea. Hundreds decided
that it wasn’t okay to let the anti-choice march pass--and decided to sit
down in the street to block its path. Sending this kind of clear message is
the way to keep abortion rights safe.

Nicole Colson writes for Socialist Worker.
This article
first appeared on the SW website (http://socialistworker.org/).
Thanks to Alan Maass.